Chain Lakes Loop: The Perfect Trip

For years I’ve had this trail, the Chain Lakes Loop, at the back of my mind. It’s been there for so long that I don’t even remember how it got there. I’ve even recommended it to other people! This trail has so much going for it – easy access to the alpine, a well maintained trail, sweeping views of tall glaciated mountains, a bunch of lakes, great camping, it’s a loop hike, and in September – no bugs and lots of berries. In my head at least, I labelled it as the “Perfect Trip”.

The only downside is that the above has been noticed by plenty of others, so this trail is extremely popular. Luckily for us, but not for the Queen, I guess, she died. In Canada that meant that the whole country was in a day of mourning on the Monday of the funeral. The mourning was mostly for the parents, since their (our) kids got a day off, while they didn’t, so most parents were scrambling to figure out a last minute solution. For us, this represented an opportunity to do an off-the-weekend trip, a favourite hack of ours, and highly recommended if you can pull it off.

We left Vancouver late in the morning on Sunday after a leisurely breakfast and headed straight to the trailhead. The Sumas border crossing is small and quiet, but it still took us 30 minutes to get through. We arrived to the Heather Meadows trailhead sufficiently late that someone was just leaving from a “rock star parking spot” – right by the trailhead. The trailhead is high enough that you already feel like you’re in the mountains. We enjoyed a scenic lunch, but weren’t fans of the stinky outhouses. At least we didn’t keep complaining vocally that the smell stuck to us, like a lady I overheard. Finally we were off, heading downhill towards Bagley Lakes.

From the lakes we climbed up to Herman Saddle, the highpoint of the day. Kai had managed the climb without too much of a struggle, and only at the price of a few gummy bears. We told him how proud we were of him. From there the views of Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan were intoxicating. It almost seemed like cheating – reaching such good views in the Coast Mountains normally requires much more effort than that.

The Washington Trails Association (WTA) website says about Herman Saddle: “It’s not a bad spot to pause for a snack and congratulate yourself on the good life choices that got you here.” So true! We repeated this sentence a few times and chuckled to ourselves. We spent a long while there enjoying the views and our trail mix, before descending to Hayes Lake.

We found the turn off for the campsites, but alas, they were all full. Or were they? We kept going along the side trail that follows the west shore of Hayes Lake. Earlier that day we had spoken to a family with two kids and they told us about a legit campsite that was right at the end, overlooked by most people. Sure enough, we got to the end of the line and found the empty campsite. It had a large open area, and even a fire ring.

We set up camp, enjoyed the many blueberries and huckleberries around our camp, and had dinner. Our camp was right between Hayes Lake and Arbuthnot Lake. The access to the latter was marshy, and I got my feet a bit wet trying to get water from a stream nearby. When I headed down to get water from Hayes Lake, I found a neat and fairly deep cave right on the shore of the lake. I showed it to the kids and we wondered what the story behind it was. Who had dug this cave? Did bears use it as a den?

The next day we packed up and retraced our steps back to the main trail. We hiked past Iceberg Lake and Table Mountain, and then up to an excellent viewpoint where we had lunch. Once again, we enjoyed a long break with the views of Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan, seemingly just a stone’s throw away. From there the trail took us across a long slope, and we could see Artist Point ahead of us long before we reached it. When we arrived, it was weird to notice that the views from the parking lot were very impressive in themselves and not too different from the views on the hike.

After a quick snack, I took the car keys and ran the rest of the trail back to our starting point, completing a loop. I needed to cover about 2kms, much of it downhill. It was fun to fly down the trail at my own speed. I was back at the car sooner than I had thought I would be, and surprised Maya who had similarly expected a longer wait. We packed up the car and after a quick debate decided that we had to head over to Bellingham for a long awaited visit to Trader Joe’s and some Mexican food at a taco truck. We took a photo at the entrance to Trader Joe’s, thinking – “this is a sign that the pandemic is finally over” (or is it?!). By the time we got to the border at Pacific Highway, it was mostly deserted and after a two minute wait drove straight up to the officer. Soon enough we were back home, another Perfect Trip behind us.

Logistics

See above for an approximate map of our route (thanks for the track, All Trails!). We started at the Heather Meadows Visitor Centre (purple hiker icon) and finished at Artist Point (blue square icon). I then ran back to the starting point to retrieve our car. The two areas with legal camping spots are indicated by a green tent icon, including the approximate location where we camped. The highest points on each day are marked with a red mountain icon. The loop is about 11km and 575m elevation gain, including the part I ran.

You can do this trip in either direction, and you have a choice of three trailheads – the two we used and the Bagley Lakes Trailhead. I think it would be good regardless, but we felt happy with our decision to start at Heather Meadows and end at Artist Point. If you choose instead to start at Artist Point, you’ll have the views you’ll see during the hike already visible to you from the car, rather than unfolding slowly as you hike like cliffhangers in a Netflix mini-series. The downside (so to speak), is that you’re starting lower and ending higher, but it’s not a big difference. The section I ran (back to the car) is parallel to the road, so we chose to cut it out and save the kids the extra effort. Kai was not yet four when we did this trip, so it was a good effort for him even without this section.

You’ll need a Northwest Forest Pass, which you can now buy online, print, and put on your dash – or stop at the ranger station in Glacier (we’ve done this in the past, it’s also a good picnic spot). The pass is $5 per day, so if you’re doing this trip over two days, you’ll need two daily passes, or you could get the annual pass for $30.